Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 12/04/2008 - 17:53

Hello Jeff,

My class and I were able to take a brief look at your journals and one of the things that caught my eye was the terming of cyclic storms around antarctica.  At this point in time I was able to bring up a model on weather underground of antarctica for my class and it clearly showed each low pressure system.  It seams the storms down there are very strong with the model forecasting pressures below 970 millibars for each center.  My classes and I would like to know if cyclic in this case means reoccuring storms at the same time every few days a low pressure center will pass through a certain point or cyclic in terms that there is always some storm system out there that will pass through a relative area in which you are traveling.  As someone who has studied a lot of meteorology and weather I know that weather systems can be somewhat hard to predict.  Are these storm tracks more predictable than say a mid latitude cyclone or hurricane?

 Mr. Garippa

Gloversville Earth Science

Jeff Peneston

Mr. Garippa!
These are the same questions that I am trying to get my head around. If you go to Stormsurf.com and click on the South Atlantic you will see the exact map and computer forecasts that the 2nd Officer and I were discussing this morning. The maps that are the most important to us on the Oden display wave height instead of air pressure. At the bottom of the map page you can select the screen to show only areas with waves over 17 feet and at the top of the page you can advance the forecast by hours until you can see projects several days in advance. What impressed me was that the storms that revolve around Antarctica average a 2-day period of calm between each storm. The Captain’s challenge is that it will take 3-4 days for us to cross the Drake and so the plan is to enter the passage on the tail of one low-pressure system and try to reach the ice edge as we get struck by the next. The model suggests that the next big storm to enter the Drake in 48 hours is predicted to have over 30 foot waves. We don’t want to deal with that!
I will try to illustrate some of these things in an upcoming journal post.
Take care, and I hope your students are enjoying the journal,
Jeff Peneston